Marilou McPhedran Interview

PROJECT TITLE: Women at the University of Winnipeg during Second-Wave Feminism

NARRATOR: Marilou McPhedran

INTERVIEWER: Alyson Shane

DATE OF RECORDING: February 24th, 2013

PLACE OF RECORDING: Via Skype [Alyson Shane’s home in Winnipeg and Marilou’s home in Costa Rica]

SESSION: 1 of 1

LENGTH OF SESSION: 1:05:22

TOTAL INTERVIEW LENGTH: 1:05:22

AUDIO QUALITY: Very good.

FILE NAME:

TRANSCRIBER: Alyson Shane

DATE TRANSCRIPTION COMPLETED: April 3rd, 2013

AUDIT EDITOR:

DATE AUDIT EDIT COMPLETED:

DATE REVIEWED BY NARRATOR:

FINAL CORRECTIONS (Date, Editor):

[0:00] Alyson Shane: Is is Sunday, February 24th [2013], I’m Alyson Shane and I am interviewing Marilou McPhedran via Skype. So, hello Marilou.

[0:12] Marilou McPhedran: Hi, hi Alyson.

[0:14] Alyson Shane: Okay so, yeah, we were kind of just discussing before I started recording, that you were going to tell me a little bit about what it was like for you at the University [of Winnipeg] as a female student. So if you could just start off with your impressions, that would be great.

[0:27] Marilou McPhedran: Well I don’t want to repeat previous references, so let me just see if I can just summarize where we left off. I had addressed the experience that I had as a result of having started my freshie year as being the now antiquated notion of being a Freshie Queen and some of the assumptions and stereotypes that attached to me, were attached to me A. because I was female and B. because of the Freshie Queen title and that by the time that I was in second year when the president of the -the then president suggested to me that I would be a good candidate for president, it seemed to me to be an important endorsement and it also seemed to be an important opportunity to be able to create a place for myself beyond that particular stereotype. So the actual campaign when I was the candidate for president was I think a very good campaign, a fair campaign, it was any debates, any differences of opinion were based on factual situations and concerns that were relevant to the student body and to student government at the University of Winnipeg. The process of governing and being part of the student government, from my experience, started out very well. By and large there were engaged and thoughtful students who were in the various positions for the student government and the process of figuring out how we were going to work together, clarifying the rules of procedure of our council meetings, figuring out who was going to represent the students on the senate, all of those issues that come up at the beginning of a new administration were resolved quite quickly and reasonably, in my experience of it.

[3:15] I think things went along quite well in terms of the functioning of the student government and my role as student president, and I have previously mentioned the influence that Moira Smith had in the, in approaching me to work with and support the work of pro-choice and reproductive choice, I was very active, and not just at the university campus but it was more of a Winnipeg-wide and even province-wide coalition of individuals and women’s organizations. That was a really important shift for me, to appreciate the issues that affected me personally and individually but had a much broader impact for many different kinds of women, different ages of women, certainly women in university, and that had also influenced me to start to step away from what was a very immature and ego-centric analysis that I had basically achieved whatever I had achieved pretty much on my own merit. The other two big shifts that I represented -and if I didn’t represent them please tell me and I will go into them in more detail but I don’t want to take up more time if I’ve already referenced it- one was the growing realization that, although not much was said to my face, there was a very definite awareness on the part of many of the men who were in the student government; there was myself and at one, at two different points in time a woman and that issues were not debated along gender lines, there was little or no close, probably zero gender analysis of any of the issues that came up for us in student government and that it actually went along quite smoothly although I began to have this realization that for many of the men in student government, they really did draw, see a difference and draw a difference between myself and them, and possibly the other two women involved but it wasn’t that clear to me because I was in the senior authority position.

[6:08] I also referenced the way in which my relationship with the then-president, because I’d had a relationship with President Lockhart, not when I was student president but when Dr. Duckworth came in as president it was his first year as president at the University of Winnipeg, and I was the first student president that he was dealing with. Fairly early on I asked to speak with him privately and I pointed out to him that he was describing me on the basis of my appearance and that he wasn’t describing anyone else that way, and that he was emphasizing my youth and not doing that to anybody else. I asked that he think about that and address my position as president with more respect, and credit to the man, he listened, he listened very respectfully, he didn’t say anything much in the meeting but subsequent to that his behaviour changed distinctly and in his memoirs he actually describes, from his perspective, our conversation and the influence it had on him in thinking about how he was behaving towards women in positions of authority. So I think that’s where we left off, was there anything else that you wanted to touch on to begin the discussion today?

[7:52] Alyson Shane: Getting back to when you were running for president, were you the only female student running for the presidency?

[8:00] Marilou McPhedran: Yes.

[8:04] Alyson Shane: Can you tell me a little bit more about the candidates who ran against you?

[8:06] Marilou McPhedran: I actually only remember one, and I believe there was more than one, do you know who the other candidates were, am I correct in remembering that Al Mitchell was on of them?

[8:20] Alyson Shane: I’m not a hundred percent sure, I’ll have to look into it for reference’s sake afterwards.

[8:26] Marilou McPhedran: Well I really hope I’m correct in that, I may not be.

[8:30] Alyson Shane: Okay.

[8:31] Marilou McPhedran: My memory is that Al Mitchell was the other candidate, or perhaps one of the other candidate, for the presidency and as I said previously the discussions and platforms and candidates meetings were conducted on the basis of issues and I had no experience in that point in time of there being any sexism directed towards me. Now that may partly be because I had some senior male student leaders who had pretty clearly indicated that, you know, they had made it clear that they had encouraged me to run. I don’t know, but Al Mitchell, if I’m correct in my memory that he was the other candidate for president, became one of the vice presidents in the student government and he was the oldest, I believe, he was a mature student, he was significantly older than the rest of us, and I think there was nobody in our student government -there was no racial diversity in our student government other than Scottish-Canadian, Ukrainian-Canadian, English-Canadian, those kinds, but pretty much all within quite an Anglo-Saxon heritage. So the diversity that we had in the student government had much more to do with age and life experiences and whether we came from a rural or an urban setting. If I recall correctly I was one of or in was the only one who came from rural Manitoba which came into play in a very incidental way maybe a couple of times, but that’s pretty much all that I remember, it was a very positive experience and I certainly did not have a strong sense that I was going to win. I also didn’t have a strong sense that I was going to lose, I didn’t know what the outcome would be. I think some people were very surprised when I did win.

[10:56] Alyson Shane: What makes you say that?

[11:00] Marilou McPhedran: The way people mentioned it, you know [sarcastically] “oh wow, I didn’t think that would be the outcome” or comments like “boy, I guess that this is the first time that the Freshie Queen has ever become president.” It was the first time that a woman had ever become student president and the university was a very young university, still, and the United College system as I’m sure you’ve researched had a Senior Stick system where the was a male Senior Stick and a female Senior Stick. So I want to, if we’re going to pick up now, on moving forward in the discussion I’d just like to go back to your reference to the ‘debacle’, your term. What do you mean by that when you referenced it as a ‘debacle’ and my leaving?

[11:50] Alyson Shane: What I mean by that is in the Complete History of the UWSA book that I was going through, there were several pages in which they referenced a conflict between you and someone at The Uniter or a series of people, perhaps, at The Uniter, who were writing defamatory articles about you and you wound up closing down the Uniter. So that’s kind of what I’m referring to when I say ‘debacle’ and I was hoping that I could get your reflections on that, and how it made you feel being the female president and having them attack you that way. You know, what let to it and whatnot.

[12:26] Marilou McPhedran: Okay. Well as you may have researched the treasurer in my student government was the son of the then, I believe he was a registrar for the university, so very influential administrative person for the university. Don Pincock. So Don Pincock was the son of Dr. Pincock who was, I’m pretty sure his title was registrar, and Don was the treasurer, I was the president and then there were several vice-presidents as we have already discussed. It would be very interesting to get other perspectives, I mean Brent Mitchell, he was the secretary and Brent Mitchell went on to be a lawyer and I believe he may now actually be a judge in Manitoba. I encountered him, I don’t think since I’ve returned in 2008 but I encountered him at a, I believe maybe a reunion, somewhere, I encountered him. Then there was Scott, Scott somebody, what was his last name, he also became a lawyer, and I ran into him because he ended up in Ontario which as you know is somewhere where I spent most of my adult life.

[14:00] When the situation with The Uniter blew up it had been percolating for some time and if you are ever to reach Tom Borowski -and you know I was thinking about this, Alyson, I have this vague recollection of somebody saying to me that Tom Borowski who had been the editor of The Uniter became very ill, and I can’t, I have no verification on that and I thought a lot about it after we talked last and I thought “oh my goodness” and I never had the recollection that there were two Tom Borowskis, but the odds that the guy that you located being the same Tom Borowski being the same guy seems impossible to me, you know, that it would be the same?

[14:50] Alyson Shane: It isn’t.

[14:52] Marilou McPhedran: Aha, so you confirmed that. Have you found the other Tom Borowski? [14:56] Alyson Shane: No I haven’t. Despite my searching I still haven’t been able to, I’m actually concerned that he may have died, but I can’t find any evidence of that, so.

[15:04] Marilou McPhedran: Actually that jots something I remember from talking to someone down the line, I think it may have been Brent Mitchell. Sure, I mean Brent Stuart, Brent Stuart; the two people I’ve had conversations with -three people- that I’ve had conversations with let’s say in the last twenty years have been Al Mitchell, Brent Stuart, and Suzanne Duran, now Monroe. Now to the best of my knowledge Brent and Suzanne Monroe are still in Manitoba and Al Mitchell is based in Ontario, and in one of those conversations when I turn my mind back to it I think someone told me that he had become very ill with cancer -he was a very heavy smoker in those days, so I have no idea what happened to him in the rest of his life -but he had become very ill with cancer and I’m just trying to put together whether he had died. I just don’t know. In any event, obviously you’re getting my perspective of what happened.

[16:13] Within the executive meetings, and the executive meetings to the student council were closed, they were not open meetings in those days. Student council meetings were open, but the executive meetings were closed and in those meetings the treasurer tabled quite early on a very real concern about the way in which The Uniter was selling ads. In particular he was very concerned because it had come to his attention -I don’t recall how- that the editor of The Uniter was accepting a weekend here or tickets to this event, he was basically receiving benefits for which he was running ads in The Uniter which they were not being charged for. The Uniter was in financial difficulty at that time, and it was a very big concern. The general manager who was a full-time staff person and compared to the rest of us much older than we were, Bob Macintosh was his name, he had raised the concern about that the fact that The Uniter was not generating the revenue that had been the basis of an agreement, that The Uniter would have its own separate books and basically have an independent operation. But it was receiving funding from the student council and there had been numerous discussions about this and there had been allegations and we had kept it inside the executive meeting and we had said to the treasurer, you know, there has to be evidence of this, we can’t make decisions on this, we can’t censure the editor, we have to be very careful to organize to make sure that the concerns are documented.

[18:19] So that work was going on and then, and no decision had been taken, and then the student elections came up again and there were many candidates for the presidents position, including I believe two women, and I think there were five or six candidates for the next term for president. So we had a whole series of open debates with these multiple candidates so they took quite a bit of time and for the most part I chaired those debates as the outgoing president, and by this time we’re at about April. So things are really coming to a close for my student government and what happened from my perspective was I walked out of one of these presidential candidate meetings and I literally walked into television cameras and microphones, and they were thrust at me and the reporters started saying “what are you as president doing denying freedom of the press?”, “The Uniter offices have been padlocked” and I had no idea that this had been done. I don’t even recall, I think I mostly said “no comment” I honestly don recall what, if anything, I said. I remember making it back into the UWSA offices and going into the general manager and the treasurer and being really angry and saying “why the fuck is going on here?” and I had been working very hard not to use that kind of language, I come from rural Manitoba, I come from a horse family, I spent a lot of time on horse farms and that’s very common language, but I felt very strongly that it was important to conduct student government without that kind of language. So I had really cleaned up my language and I just remember them both looking up with these kind of shocked expressions and what had happened was that the treasurer had made the decision and taken the action and had padlocked the uniter offices. I said “this is crazy” we have to have an executive meeting so we pulled together very quickly and there were very strongly divided views on this though however the horse was out of the barn, the door had been padlocked and the treasurer justified his actions by saying “the uniter was not at that time an independent corporation, it was part of the UWSA corporation, that there were significant financial irregularities, that they had tried to get Tom Borowski and Ian, someone, Ian, I don’t remember his last name, Ian, I’m thinking maybe Adams but I’m not positive about that. Ian somebody. To get them to report on this and speak and they had just flatly refused and the treasurer now felt that he had sufficient justification and he just acted unilaterally.

[22:12] I remember my father was in government at the time and had run politically, he was never elected, but I remember going to him, contacting my father and having a conversation with him and him saying to me: this comes down to cabinet solidarity. Because an action has been taken and you’re going to have to decide, whether you disagree with what has been done, if you’re going to break with -because the majority of the executives said “we’re going to go with this” and there was clearly, it was becoming an issue in the media and it was really focusing on me which was really evident by the way the cameras were going after me as opposed to the treasurer. So I was very influence by my dad and I went back to the university the next morning and I made the decision to follow with cabinet solidarity and I made the decision even though I did not agree with what the treasurer had done. I made the decision that overall we were stuck with this, that we had longstanding concerns, that I was going to tough it out and we were going to remain solid as an executive [board].

[23:44] I doubt that anybody remembers anything about anybody other than me as being the bad guy in that scenario. It became a real news item, the The Winnipeg Tribune was a newspaper that still existed at that time and they did a cartoon in the paper where they depicted me of the then Vice President Spiro Agnew, the Republican Vice President and I mean it was a losing position from the moment it started, because it was of course seen to be about the freedom of the press. And you know, we learn from our mistakes, and there are numerous times in my life since where I’ve had to make a similar kind of decision and I’ve always opted to go with my own position. I’ve spent a lot of time arguing for more people to come to my side when there has been that kind of division but in my mind that was the last time that I ever defended a position that I actually believed as a mistake.

[25:03] Alyson Shane:Was it unusual for somebody in student government to act like that without consulting you?

[25:10] Marilou McPhedran: Yes. I would say so, I would say that our decisions up until then had been consultative and we had worked on censuses as an execute ve and we had gone into Student Council meetings really quite in agreement with one another. I don’t have ay recollection of there being any rivalry, I have no recollection of there being anyone trying to actively undermine me in the student council meetings, I certainly did have an increasing -because The Uniter campaign against me had started to happen before this incident. If you look at the dates, Tom Borowski was already targeting me before there was a padlocking of their offices. But of course, people, what they saw was a relation on my part for the way in which the newspaper had been very personal and inappropriate ways, sexualized the criticism of me.

[26:24] Alyson Shane: Can you possible go into, if you don’t mind, some of the details of what was said by Tom -by The Uniter and why you feel they targeted you.

[26:35] Marilou McPhedran: Well, I can’t speak for them. I think I’ve already referenced the fact that when I was in first year, Tom Borowski asked me out a couple of times.

[26:48] Alyson Shane: Yes, you did. [26:50] Marilou McPhedran: So that may or may, there may or may not have been a personal issue there. I think that there was a sense on the part of Tom Borowski and some of the other men that were a part of his possee that their politics were very different from my politics. I certainly didn’t -my father was in politics, he was a Conservative candidate who was recruited by Duff Roblin to run in rural Manitoba, and, but I had separated myself from him and from the party when I was still in high school, so it wasn’t a matter of my being a member of a party, of a particular party. I think there definitely was an impression that they were much more progressive than I was, and the other members of my council were. I think that there were, I mean this may be hard for you to appreciate but the truth of the matter is that I’ve never gone back to read the material. I have it, where my archives are at York University, I have some of that material, some of those clippings are in my archives and when they did the cataloging one of the archivists said to me “oh my goodness, what you went through” and I said “well, you know it was a really traumatic experience and I haven’t really revisited much of it.”

[28:43] There are two references, and I can’t quote them, but these I do remember: one reference was to my face and to the lack of credibility that I had because of my face, they didn’t come out and say that I had a lack of credibility because I had been the Freshie Queen, but it was constructed that way, and the other, and my recollection was that it was more that one occasion and I believe it was a recurring theme that Tom Borowski used, which was about my ass. But in particular, about my anus and sphincter muscles, and he made a couple of references to my recollection to my body, but in particular to my anus and my rectum and my sphincter muscles.

[29:35] Alyson Shane: Oh. Go ahead.

[29:35] Marilou McPhedran: You know, so that’s all that I can tell you right now, there’s more detail to be had in looking at the archives but this all happened in 1972, is that right?

[29:58] Alyson Shane: Yes I believe it was that year.

[30:00] Marilou McPhedran: Yeah so 1972, so that all happened in April and May in 1972 and Tom Borowski and his colleagues, now, looking back on it, they maximized an opportunity very strategically because it was a losing issue for our student government to have padlocked the student newspaper, so it really caught fire as a broader issue and I, and I alone, became the personification of the issue. I, you know, I bought into the notion that as the president I spoke for the entire student executive and my recollection is that the others just stood back. On the very last day, or second last day of my term as student president I heard that Tom Borowski and organized a public lynching where they were going to hang me in effigy and they had called a student meeting in the cafeterias and had announced that there was going to be this hanging of me in effigy. I decided to go and thought, wrongly, that I’d be given the opportunity to speak and there would be some kind of opportunity to clarify. I mean, I was nineteen years old and I certainly didn’t have a lot of experience, I certainly didn’t know the scale of the event that I was going to walk into. I don’t know how many students were in the cafeteria, I don’t know if anybody did a count, but when I remember walking into that cafeteria I dont remember any space. I remember it being solid, a solid wall of people, I’m not going to say students because I don’t think that they were all students. Did I mention the Kodak Doll?

[32:30] Alyson Shane: I don’t think so.

[32:33] Marilou McPhedran: Well the other thing that Tom and his group did was that in that period of the presidential debates they obtained a Kodak, this would be long, long, long before your time, but for many drugstores, particularly, that were selling film, Kodak film, long before digital cameras, would have a full-size, even more than a full-size, five and a half to six feet tall, thick, thick cardboard cut-out that was on its own independent stand. And they would put it outside of the door on sidewalks and it was of a woman usually in a bathing suit, usually a very skimpy bathing suit, I remember at one point it was a polka-dot bikini, holding, because the colours for Kodak were yellow and black, and holding a box of Kodak film in her hand in this yellow and black polka dot bikini. Somehow they got a hold of one, they labelled it with my name and wherever I went, if I was in a meeting, they would put it outside of the meeting room. This went on on multiple occasions, and that, that-that was very personalized, and there was very little gender analysisof what they were doing, it was seen as funny, maybe a little bit off-colour, but clearly targeted at me. So by the time we got to, it was May 3rd or 4th or 5th, the first week of May, when I walked into the cafeteria, it was just heart-stopping, the number of people that were there and the mod -again, I can only give you my perception- the mob-like quality.

[35:03] I wish, many, many times over the years I would I could have remembered this mans name, there was a guy who was on the periphery of the student government and I don’t remember exactly what he way, maybe he we on our athletic committee, and he was also, there was a karate club at the time and he was a key player in the karate club at the time. I remember walking into the cafeteria and trying to make my way to the front thinking that I was going to have an opportunity to speak and people were pushing and there was tremendous hostility and I was actually pretty scared and I had gone in alone. Kind of out of nowhere this guy pushed his way through and he stood inf ront of me and I think he yelled, I’m not sure, but several other member of the the then karate club showed, they just gathered with him and they created a pathway for me and they kept people from pushing. They could stop them from pushing but they couldn’t stop them from yelling things at me, and as I kind of made my way farther into the crowd I looked up and I saw the effigy, which was a whole lot worse than the Kodak doll.

[36:42] I’m not quite sure of the details after that, my recollection is that I tried to speak and that I was shouted down. I don’t remember leaving, I don’t even remember how I got out of there, but I certainly remember the crush of bodies, I certainly remember people yelling, I remember looking up and seeing Tom Borowski with a microphone, seeing the effigy, and then within a very short time my term was over and I had already secured a summer job in Toronto. For several summers prior to that I had been a counsellor for a camp for disabled kids in Manitoba and I had secured a job in Toronto doing similar work. So I left. I was nineteen and I didn’t expect to ever return to Manitoba.

[37:46] Alyson Shane: I guess to just rewind a little bit, I do want to talk about why you came back, but so you didn’t get any support from the faculty or staff at the University of Winnipeg? Nobody stepped in to say “this is inappropriate” or anything? Did you get any support from anyone on campus?

[38:02] Marilou McPhedran: I have no recollection of anyone bringing any gender analysis to it or indicating that it was inappropriate behaviour. I have no recollection of that.

[38:20] Alyson Shane: Do you think-

[38:24] Marilou McPhedran: I don’t remember if anything had been said or done. There may have been but I have no recollection of that.

[38:31] Alyson Shane: Just to speculate, do you think that if you were a man, that there would have been that same social backlash, that something would have happened in a similar fashion. Or do you think that you were targeted because you were a woman?

[38:42] Marilou McPhedran: Well, I think that it was both. I was targeted because I was the president and I made the decision to defend the action that was taken against The Uniter, and I did feel that our concerns were justified and I did feel that there was financial irregularity and mismanagement at The Uniter. I had absolutely not approved the closing and padlocking of the office, but I worked with it. I didn’t step away from the executive on that, and so it wasn’t as simple as a sexist attack. I think the nature of the attacks had a great deal to do with being the first woman president but I think a lot of the concern and criticism was actually quite justified, I mean it was a bad decision. It was a bad action, it was an ill-advised, non-strategic action and it was a bad decision in retrospect to support something that I didn’t agree with.

[40:03] Alyson Shane: So you said that you went away during the summer to work, and you didn’t wind up coming back to the University of Winnipeg, you wound up finishing your degree in Toronto, is that correct?

[40:12] Marilou McPhedran: That’s correct.

[40:14] Alyson Shane: So what made you want to come back to the university after having this horrible experience? Because you came back and you worked at the Global College, if I’m not mistaken.

[40:23] Marilou McPhedran: That was in 2008, that’s almost 40 years later.

[40:30] Alyson Shane: Oh, I understand that. I was just asking about, what about Winnipeg brought you back? Why would you want to come back here after having that experience?

[40:37] Marilou McPhedran: Well, I think that prior to that, it’s important to remember another reference that I had made to the influence and the longstanding relationship that I had had with Carl Ridd. That, and then, Marsha Hannon became the president at the University of Winnipeg and Marsha Hannon is a feminist, and a very gracious, thoughtful person, and Carol Shields became the Chancellor. I already had a very personal relationship with Carol Shields, one of her daughters was a close friend of mine in Toronto and had actually been one of my staff when I was the head of ‘Be Healthy City’ in Toronto. So there was a welcoming environment for me as the result of Marsha being the president and Carol being the Chancellor and Carl Ridd still being alive. So there was a tribute for Carl Ridd when he retired and I came back for that tribute, and I made the connection with old friends like Frederick, and Jim Miller, and when I was in first year English I became friends with Cecilia Braun, literally on our first day of first-year English, and she and her husband are here with me now in Costa Rica. She remained from that day on, one of my closest personal friends and then my closest, longest-time friend from growing up in Neepawa, Manitoba also stayed in Winnipeg or in Manitoba, mostly, so I had a network, a personal network in the city so that when I came back I had trusted friends and people that I knew. So I didn’t come back often, but I did come back for a number of key events at the University of Winnipeg. In the early 1990’s when Marsha Hannon was the President, she and others, I’m not sure of the others but it was Marha who contacted me, and the university gave me an honorary doctorate, so I came back for that as well, so each time I came back it was for a particular event.

[43:44] How I came to Global College, you’ve seen my CV, so you’ve seen my CV so you’ve got a sense of where I’ve been and the different kinds of projects that I’ve worked on. So I, in 2007 I had just, I don’t think it had been announced yet, but I was just about to be named the Chief Commissioner for Human Rights for Saskatchewan, and I was visiting, I had a visiting chair in International Human Rights at the Saskatchewan law school. There was a reunion, a [University of Winnipeg] 2007 reunion, it was the 40th reunion and I came back for that and Lloyd Axworthy had recently become the president. I came back with no expectation that LLoyd Axworthy would even say hello to me, because he had not been, in fact, spoken to me for decades as a result of our differences during the Charter and the Constitution during the  early1980’s. I knew numerous people and had really been strongly encouraged to come back by a number of people. I had reconnected with the Ridd family, Carl Ridd had passed away and there was a decision to name the chapel at the University of Winnipeg after him, and that meant a great deal to me, so I wanted to be there for that, and one of the people who was also there was the very revered Lois Wilson, retired senator and very revered Lois Wilson. Do you know who that is?

[45:43] Alyson Shane: I’m not familiar, no.

[45:44] Marilou McPhedran: So that’s worth Googling, she’s an absolutely remarkable, remarkable women, she was one of the first women in Canada to become an anointed minister. She had a joint ministry with her husband, Roy, in Winnipeg, for many years. She went on to become the first woman moderator for the United Church of Canada, and if you’re not familiar the Moderator is the highest-ranking office in the United Church and it’s very interesting if you think about the root of that word. She was then named, well into her seventies, she was named to the Senate of Canada as an independent senator, and she and I worked together on a number of different issues, she and Roy lived in Toronto for a number of years after they moved to Toronto, even though the truth of the matter is that she never really retired. She’s always working on on amazing project or another, or multiples of them, still. And Lois was there [at the reunion], so we had a very joyful reconnection and I said to her, because I always knew her in a Toronto context and I said “oh Lois it’s so great to see you” and she said “well, you know I have Winnipeg roots” and I said “oh really” and she said “Roy and I were the ministers to the Axworthy family and we watched those boys grow up and we’ve known Lloyd forever. Now he’s the President so I was happy to come back, I was delighted to come back.” So she and I were standing and talking at the reception after the naming of the new chapel, and another thing about Lois Wilson is, I don’t know, have you and I ever met in person?

[47:40] Alyson Shane: You and I? No, we haven’t.

[47:42] Marilou McPhedran: Okay so I’m not a small woman, not at all a small woman, and Lois Wilson is a tiny woman. She has a massive personality and character, but a tiny little woman. So the two of us were standing there talking, and on the far side of the room President Axworthy was making his way, talking to people, shaking hands, chatting, and at one point I realized that he was making a beeline towards us, towards Lois and I. He came up and he threw his arms around Lois and he, you know, he had to bend down to do that, he was completely out of my line of vision, I was much taller. They had a wonderful reconnection and he was so pleased to see her and they were going to get together after the lunch, et cetera, and she said to him “do you know my friend Marilou?” He kind of looked up and, you know, he said “oh yes, I know Marilou.” Not particularly warm [laughs] but he was gracious and we were chatting and there was an announcement and we were all supposed to go in to lunch. So he moved away from us to I guess get there before the other people and Lois and I meandered and we were some of the last people. She already had a seat arranged with some people and as I was kind of coming in, bringing up the rear, Dr. Axworthy paused and looked right into my face and he said “you know about our Global College” and I said: “I saw something about it on the website” and he said: “well, what do you think?” and I said: “I think it’s a great idea, universities have to have a mechanism in order to promote interdisciplinary [studies], and that’s what I see with your Global College. I see that as a structural mechanism where the only way that it can succeed is to draw from other programs and bring professors and draw it together.” I said “its name is wonderful, and its missions is wonderful, I was very excited to see that the mission includes action”, because it’s research, dialogue and action, and I said “but I don’t really know much more than that.”

[50:27] And he [Dr. Lloyd Axworthy] said “we’re having a challenge launching the program” he said “and I’m looking for a new Dean” and I said “oh” and he said “would you be interested?” It was one of the most astonishing conversations that I’ve ever had in my life, and I said “I mean, I love the idea but I think I’m about to take something fairly significant, a new appointment” and he said “well, I want you to talk to our Vice President International, Neil Besner, so please look for me after the lunch and I’d like you to chat with him.” So I said “okay, sure, fine” and I tried to find somewhere to sit. I was one of the last people to enter the hall, there were people already beginning to talk at the microphone, and I looked around and I couldn’t really find a seat, so I took the first one I could see, they had already started, so I didn’t infrotuce myself to the other people at the table. So when they started serving the lunch and the food, I turned to the man on my left and I said “hi my name is Marilou McPhedran” and he said “oh hello, my name is Neil Besner” and I looked at him and said “um, Neil Besner, are you the Vice President International here?” and he said “I’m the Associate Vice President International” and I said “oh, Dr. Axworthy just mentioned your name to me and he said that he wanted me to talk to you”, and he said “what about?” and I said “I’m not exactly sure, he had asked me about the Global College.” And Neil Besner said “well I’m in charge of Global College but we’re just in the very beginning stages” and I said “yes I know that” and so he excused himself and he walked over to Dr. Axworthy’s table and he leaned down and they had a conversation, and then he went over to another gentleman and he leaned down and had a conversation with the second gentleman and then he came back and he sat down and he said to me and he said “I know what we need to talk about, do you have a little bit of time after lunch?” so I said “sure, my plane’s not for another couple of hours.”

[52:45] So he said to me “we’d like for you to come and give some guest lectures, and we’ve done a search for the new Dean of the Global College, we have a lot of questions about it and we’re not really happy with our choices, and we’re about to reopen the search. Would you consider putting your name in?” and I said “well, I don’t know, I need to -can I get a job description?” and he said “basically the job description is that we want to launch a new degree and we’ve been having some challenges and we need someone who is a start-up person and somebody who finishes what they start.” So I said “well, okay, that kind of describes a lot of what I’ve done, so sure, why don’t you send me the information. I can’t say, it’s not going to be public for a bit, but I’m not really sure I can be a contender for this but I’m willing to take a look at it and I’d be delighted to come back and be a guest lecturer. That would be my great pleasure to come back to my alma mater.” So that’s how that started, that conversation occurred in September 2007 and I was appointed, and by then they had clarified that the title of the Global College would be Principal. It had been Dean, but they changed it, and they sent me the updated information and I said I would be willing to be considered and in June of 2008 I was appointed and made the move back to the ‘Peg [Winnipeg].

[54:33] Alyson Shane: So it looks like we don’t have a ton of time left, I know you’re really busy, so I was wondering if we could just conclude with getting your thoughts on what you felt the climate was like for female students on campus when you first started at the university and when you came back, and if you feel opportunities for females on campus and accessibility options and stuff like that have increased, if there’s any work that the university still needs to do. If you could just wrap up with your thoughts on that, that would be wonderful.

[55:01] Marilou McPhedran: Well there is a dramatic difference between both the environment and therefore the opportunities and the ethos around male and female students on campus. The issues when I was a student, I mean the laws we maliciously sexist, everyone, virtually everyone who was married took their husbands name. In some parts of Canada that was required. You know, there were just a myriad of forms of discrimination in law, practice, in society, and there was, I mean, anyone that was proactive on women’s issues at the University of Winnipeg when I was a student, was seen as really quite marginalized. At that point in time there was a strong connection between being situated on various points along the spectrum on the quote-unquote left, there was like, nothing to be had in the middle or the right of the political spectrum that had anything to do with equality of the sexes. Now the frontiers that women face, there are many more similarities, I think, because it has so much to do with gender identity and that what started out as gender analysis which was basically male/female, man/woman, has evolved into a much better and more accurate understanding of the many different aspects of gender and genders, and potentially no gender. So that, and this is not particular to the University of Winnipeg, obviously. Battles have been won, reproductive choice being one key example, the birth control handbook that was made available to students when I was in university was on the very edge of being illegal to even hand out any information, all of the lawsuits and the various changes in policy et cetera that created choice, particularly in the mid-eighties, much of that has been eroded and it’s largely invisible to your generation, Alyson, and until there is a need to exercise reproductive choice, and Manitoba is one of the places where there is the broadest reach of genuine reproductive choice, ie: being able to access an abortion legally and with dignity. In many parts of Canada that’s not available anymore, there was a period in many parts of Canada where it was available, and now it’s not available. It’s not because of a federal law saying, it’s because of the other ways in which various avenues have been shut off so that de facto choice is not available to significantly more of your generation than to me or the women coming after me.

[59:12] So the forms of discrimination that are being faced by young women today are much harder to identify and there’s a very significant difference in analysis of what I even a quote-unquote “women’s issue” or a gender equality issue. I think one of the things that I’ve noticed, and I’m speaking for myself and I mean no offense to you, I just don’t know you well enough to know whether you would take offense, but I do perceive a very real difference between the willingness to take action, various forms of political engagement, and in some cases I see a greater sophistication and a much better developed strategic sense, but in some cases I’m puzzled at why there hans’t been much of a consolidation of concern. I think it has a lot to do with some very real differences, and I don’t think they’re only generational, I think that people my age who have a definition of what freedom means and what sexism means and I would point particularly to a high, high level of acceptance of what I consider to be exploitative pornography and a promotion of violence, sexualized violence in imagery, in programming, in advertising, that has increased. The grouping within my generation that fought that battle and initially expressed concerns and wanted to address the impact, we’ve lost that battle, and most of those organizations like Media Watch have either declined or disappeared. So freedom, I think, Janis Joplin said “freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”, I think there are some very real differences in definition and for me the work I do internationally, I have quote substantially different perceptions and what I find dealing with many, not all, of the students and women students at UW is that -and I will say this about U of W, by and large, U of W is not a campus where there is a global perspective or a global understanding. It is not a campus where the rich opportunity for students to learn from each other, whether they’re Aboriginal students or students who come from refugee camps in conflict zones, and we have a significant number of students who come out of those situations and who come from many different countries in Africa and Asia. There’s not a lot of informal sharing of experiences, but there’s not, from what I see, a lot of organized animosity. There’s a process that’s going on, that I think we’re headed in the right direction.

[1:01:10] The single greatest difference that I perceive, and I’m saying this as the mother of two sons, who are 28 and 27 now, the biggest single difference that I see from my experience as a woman student to what I see in the hallways, what I see in the classrooms, what I see on the Global College student advisory council, for example, is that young women and women, now have an alliance. A mutual regard, a mutual respect. Many, many, many more young men have internalized a sense of fairness and justice that is predicated on an understanding and a commitment to gender equality. It doesn’t even need discussion, most times, it’s like it’s in the DNA, and friendships between the sexes operate at a level now that are so rich and so deep and so much greater than certainly what I ever experienced until later in my life. I think it’s fabulous, I think the big challenge is the larger international context into which you are coming as adults, the forces against the kinds of freedoms that you take for granted as Canadians, the forces are huge, amassing against those and Canada is really under siege because of our current government and the very obvious way in which that the current government is ‘Americanizing’ Canada with what are in my opinion the least, limiting genuine freedom, limiting genuine freedom of opportunity, in so many different ways.

[1:05:10] Alyson Shane: Okay, so that was my final interview question, I’m just going to end off the recording here. So I have just finished interviewing Marilou, it is now 12:15 on February 24th [2013] and we were on Skype.

[End Recording]